Nuns know they are signing up for a hard life when they take their vows, stretching from dawn prayers to gruelling missionary work, but three nuns working in a community near Rome decided they had been pushed too far when the local bishop demanded they double up as personal cleaners for two ageing priests.

The nuns, supported by their mother superior back at their order in Lucca, refused to interrupt their good works with local youngsters to pick up mops and start cleaning.

After digging in their heels they were fired for their disobedience by the bishop, Marcello Semeraro, according to La Stampa newspaper.

By asking the nuns to leave the parish Semeraro ignored the wishes of parishioners in the parish of St Peter and Paul in Aprilia, south of Rome, 1,500 of whom signed a letter rallying to the nuns' cause and expressing their "bitterness and incredulity" with the church.

"We have here an ecclesiastical hierarchy which will give a role to women who have taken vows if they are prepared to first go and work as housewives for priests," local people wrote in an angry statement that was issued after the nuns were pulled out of Aprilia by their order on October 21.

"We hope very much his excellency is not really convinced that taking such a commitment is a condition that the sisters can remain in our community."

The three unnamed sisters had been dispatched to Aprilia by the order of St Gemma in Lucca, an order named after a 19th-century Italian woman who suffered from meningitis before reportedly experiencing stigmatic wounds which bled copiously. She died of TB at the age of 25.

"No one in the church considered that these nuns are a spiritual point of reference in people's lives," wrote the parishioners. The two priests in question, they added, had not even asked for nuns to wash their floors, but the bishop had insisted.

The diocese of Albano takes in Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the Pope. Semeraro, 60, who has taught theology at the pontifical Lateran University and who heads the board of administrators at Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian bishop's conference, was not available for comment.